By URSULA MEIER
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Design: TROÏKA • photos copyright J. PRÉBOIS by URSULA MEIER FRANCE BOX PRODUCTIONS, ARCHIPEL 35, NEED PRODUCTIONS Distribution / DIAPHANA DISTRIBUTION 155, rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine - 75011 Paris present Tel.: +33 1.53.46.66.66 / Fax: +33 1.53.46.62.29 IN CANNES Résidence du Grand Hôtel / 47, la Croisette ISABELLE HUPPERT and OLIVIER GOURMET Albatros - 2nd Floor - Tel.: +33 4 93 39 98 10 Fax: +33 4 93 39 97 73 - [email protected] PRESS / LAURENCE GRANEC, KARINE MÉNARD 5 bis, rue Kepler - 75116 Paris Tel.: +33 1 47 20 36 66 - Fax: +33 1 47 20 35 44 IN CANNES Résidence du Gray d'Albion 20bis, rue des Serbes - Entrace D Appartement 2D5 - 2nd Floor Tel.: +33 4 93 68 17 84 / +33 4 93 68 19 33 Cell LAURENCE GRANEC: +33 6 07 49 16 49 Cell KARINE MÉNARD: +33 6 85 56 22 99 French Press Kit and pictures available at www.diaphana.fr with ADÉLAÏDE LEROUX SWITZERLAND Distribution / FILMCOOPI ZÜRICH AG a film by 114, Heinrichstrasse - Case Postale 1366 - 8031 Zûrich Tel.: +41 44 448 44 22 / Fax: +41 44 448 44 28 URSULA MEIER [email protected] / www.filmcoopi.ch PRESS JEAN-YVES GLOOR 97 minutes Cell: Suisse +41 79 210 98 21 Cell: France +33 6 50 89 90 80 (Cannes) Dolby SRD - 1,85 - 35 mm [email protected] WORLD SALES IN CANNES INTERNATIONAL PRESS BENELUX MEMENTO FILMS INTERNATIONAL (May 14-26) RICHARD LORMAND Distribution / LUMIÈRE DISTRIBUTION 6, cité Paradis RIVIERA Booth n° E.8 - Cell: +33 6 59 54 24 45 world cinema publicity Handeldokcenter - Stapelplein 70 b302 - 9000 Gent 75010 Paris EMILIE GEORGES www.filmpressplus.com Tel.: +32 9 235 40 20 - Fax: +32 9 235 40 29 Tel.: +33 1 53 34 90 20 Cell: +33 6 62 08 83 43 - emilie@memento-films. com [email protected] http://www.lumiere.be Fax: +33 1 42 47 11 24 TANJA MEISSNER IN CANNES (MAY 14-25) PRESS / VEERLE CREVE [email protected] Cell: +33 6 22 92 48 31 - tanja@memento-films. com Tel.: +33 8 70 44 98 65 Cell: +32 473 50 68 79 JULIE SUSSET Cell: +33 6 09 92 55 47 [email protected] Cell: +33 6 69 57 26 48 - julie@memento-films. com +33 6 24 24 16 54 A family's peaceful existence is threatened when a busy highway is opened only meters away from their isolated house in the middle of nowhere. Refusing to move, Marthe, Michel and their three children find innovative ways to adapt to their new environment. They continue their happy-go-lucky routine despite the daily stress of hundreds of noisy speeding cars. But suspicions about the highway's unknown long-term dangers cause family tension. Remaining in the disrupted house- hold might not be so easy, but it's still their home. HOME was born in a car, while looking at the highway's edge: houses only a few meters from the pavement, people in their yards, plastic tables a few meters from exhaust pipes, and other houses abandoned with boarded up windows... Houses like stories flying past a car window. Accented by the incessant movement of the ebb and flow of cars and trucks on the highway, HOME is the opposing image of a road movie, its negation in some way. There's movement in HOME, but hardly any travel. HOME is a sort of expedition without displacement. It's an interior voyage, a cerebral one. It's only in the end when the road movie can begin... HOME tells the story of a family who has pulled away from the world to try to maintain its model of family happiness. A jovial atmosphere reigns at the heart of the family, even if they have adopted a well-regulated life far from the rest of the world. This isolated feeling will become more and more evident with the functioning of the highway, which is only the catalyst to an already existing situation. The opening of the highway - metaphor for the world which arrives before their own home (a world which is noisy, dangerous, polluted, dirty, worrisome, vampiric, menacing...) -- acts as sort of a magnifying glass at the heart of the family and it reveals its A CONTEMPORARY FABLE ABOUT FAMILY dysfunctions and inner troubles. Life slowly becomes The relentless desire to remain living in that house at all unbearable for the family and despite every member's costs day after day becomes a real menace for all family efforts, for better or worse, to take hold of the situation by members. This situation at the most hostile of highway's his or her own means. Between them, there's a sort of tacit edges is not experienced as a problem by the family. agreement in the obstinacy of wanting to remain living in Instead, it is taken as an act, and facing acts, the family this house, an almost unconscious will to preserve the responds with acts. Thus the viewer ends up facing "ideal" home, to hold on to a model of family harmony... something ineluctable in this permanent will of adaptation. This family withdrawal and this growing fusion results in To maintain the family unity and cohesion, each character strange moments of happiness, thanks to which the family keeps his or her suffering private, only going deeper inside finds its strength to confront the hostile world which is the into troubled areas, sinking into a personal madness. highway. But due to their obstinacy, it won't be known This family, which has been unconsciously created around anymore whether the highway or the family represents the the fragility of the mother, Marthe, has found an biggest danger... equilibrium in this unique location. With the approaching The story goes hand in hand with the setting and the opening of the highway, Marthe denies the situation and situation. Remaining there at the highway's edge at all refuses to leave. She is incapable of tearing herself away costs. The highway isn't simply a set but a whole character from this place. Michel, the father, supports her with love, in itself, like an element which is intrinsically and loyalty and fidelity even when she lacks judgement and intimately tied to the family story. beyond... With each gesture, each action, and all his will power, Michel utters and proves that it is possible to remain and live there. Michel's unreasonableness is born from his ability to over-adapt without cracking... The more Marthe will let go and the more Michel will become proactive and make decisions but never the right ones. He ends up using bricks instead of words... TWO PARALLEL WORLDS: MIXED TONES THE HIGHWAY AND THE FAMILY The film oscillates between burlesque and drama, by carrying The uniqueness of this family drama is that it's played out only a the audience to the limits of absurdity and lack of reason, few meters from the thousands of people who pass by on the without being able to distinguish between them. Black comedy highway and remain sheltered from their sight. and uneasiness are called forth mostly by the obsessional nature The drivers remain anonymous to the family throughout the film. of the characters. This family wants to continue to live The world of the highway and that of the family remain two very "normally", to keep up the appearances of family life, but parallel worlds which never enter into interaction. The family despite itself, it becomes more and more marginal day after day... merely receives bits from that other world which passes in front of The "go-all-the-way" attitude is part of my personal obsessions: them: horn-blowing, headlights calling, thrown trash, Radio whether in my short film TOUS A TABLE, in which friends Highway Network... Apart from the last shot of the film, the meet around a table to solve a riddle and stay there without camera is always from the family's point of view, allowing the question until the enigma is solved, thus leaving their evening audience to live out this situation with the characters and to enter no choice but to turn badly. Or in another way, STRONG little by little into each one's mindset. The highway, such a SHOULDERS, which shows how the enraged obsession continuous flowing river, reacts like a sort of monitor on which of a young female athlete makes her push her body all each character projects his own worries, neuroses... the way, like a machine, to its own limits and detriment. Through the characters' increasingly strange behavior, we realize little by little that the danger might not come from the highway, NOISE but from the family itself... For in HOME, what is the most violent In this situation of a house on the edge of a highway, there's and extreme is the will to remain living there and to hold on. something strong in terms of sounds and visuals which has We observe to what extent the human being is capable of an effect on the film's subject matter itself and on its withstanding such a situation, of dealing with reality, of adapting, narrative. even over-adapting in the name of family happiness. The During the film, little by little, the noise of the highway progression of the film doesn't happen in a long group awakening, becomes the film's subject matter and in an almost organic but in an inescapable enclosure. The characters evolve in bursts, way. This uninterrupted noise slowly begins to eat away at the abruptly.